Joe Biden for President in 2016?

Current US Vice President Joe Biden may make a run in the Presidential election in 2016. While he has not come out and made an official bid he is making comments that show his intentions. He sees that there are reasons not to run but “there’s no obvious reasons” not to run either, Biden recently told CNN. He also said that the final decision will come next summer.

He did run for president twice in the past (1988 and 2008) but lost both times. He says that he loves the challenge of the political game and when CNN asked him if he could think of any reason not to run again in 2016 he simply said “I can’t.” The advantage this time is he has served as the second most powerful man in the country increasing his knowledge and influences in Washington D.C. and before that held a senate seat for three decades.

However, there is one person standing in his way; Hillary Clinton. Right now, Clinton is the democratic favorite for presidential nomination and in a recent hypothetical primary poll; Clinton beat out Biden by a huge margin, 73 percent to Biden’s meager 12 percent. While such polls are just hypothetical it still shows Biden that he is facing a candidate that is not only more popular with the party but is also incredibly well-financed.

Even in the Clinton shadow, Joe Biden for president in 2016 is still a possibility, especially if Clinton decides not to run. In a recent interview with Barbara Walters, Clinton said she would make the decision to run or not “sometime next year.” She also told Walters that she has not “made up her mind” yet and that she planned to “look carefully” at what she thinks she can do before making that decision.

While Biden cannot see any reasons not to run, there are some who can find plenty. Besides the obvious Clinton obstacle there is also the recent comment he made about New York City’s LaGuardia airport. He compared it to “some Third World Country” which did not set well with NYC mayor Bill de Blasio.

Of course, Joe Biden and his supporters see this as word play and taking the Vice President’s speech out of context. Biden is on a tour pushing the President’s “year of action” as Obama laid out in the State of the Union address. The President gave Biden six months to come up with a task force to not only reform federal job training but to lead more than 10 million unemployed Americans to finding suitable work.

Right now, Joe Biden for President in 2016 is purely hypothetical and more of a “testing the water” phase than an actual bid. If Clinton does decide to run Biden did comment that he would not attempt to seek the office. But, if for some reason Hillary Clinton does not run for president in 2016 that will leave the democratic door wide open for Biden to seek the highest office in the United States.